I am sorry but this does not look tasty. But then for the ultra-nationalists the dolphins are just an excuse to preserve barbarism.

Ric O’Barry the star of the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove – about the Japanese town of Taiji that slaughters dolphins – has delivered a petition to the US Embassy in Tokyo demanding an end to the annual dolphin hunt.

The petition was signed by over 1.7 million people from 155 nations and was handed to an official at the embassy’s gate. O’Barry was going to deliver it to the Japanese Fisheries Agency but an ultra-nationalist group known for violence threatened to harm him.

Most countries it seems have their own pet lunatic ultra-right wing radicals and Japan is no exception. They are the same winners who like to defend Japan’s ‘cultural’ right to go to the other side of the other side of the world and hunt Whale.

The Japanese Government allows a hunt of about 20,000 dolphins a year, and says that killing them – and also whales – is no different from raising cows or pigs for slaughter. Dolphins are a darn sight more intelligent than a cow though. Probably even smarter than a Japanese ultra-nationalist. The dolphin hunt in Taiji got underway last Wednesday.

O’Barry was accompanied on his petiton delivery mission by supporters with a somewhat predictable banner saying “Let’s save Japanese dolphins.”

Perhaps they should have been a little braver and have a banner saying something like “People who think killing whales and dolphins is a good idea should be hunted to further scientific research into lower life-forms.” Now that would upset the ultra-mationalists so much they might just spontaneously combust with outrage. Definitely a YouTube hit in the making if someone could get it on film.